Konshin moved into Melikhovo on 14 August and Masha went to join Anton in Moscow. Evgenia lived with Konshin until 20 August. In Masha's absence, Quinine, the dachshund bitch, had her eye ripped out by a farm dog and ran into Varenikov's yard, where she died in agony. Masha had gone back to pack the crockery. Breaking the news of Quinine's end, she told Anton: 'Not a lot of fun, darling! God grant we get out of here quickly. It has been raining ever since we came. The road is sheer horror. We are wet to the bone… Give my regards to your Knipper woman.' When the sale was over, Masha made her feelings plain to Misha: On Monday 6 September I am taking mother and the old Mariushka to the Crimea on the mail train… We sold Melikhovo, but how!… I am so fed up with Melikhovo that I agreed to anything… Anton didn't want to accept these terms. Perhaps Konshin is a crook, what can we do!… I don't think I shall have any money for a long time, which is why I turn to you. Merci I received the cheque, Anton forbade me to stop teaching, hinting that I shall have no private life, but I don't care. I shall spend a winter in Moscow and then see what happens… Anton was very ill when he came back from the Crimea -he had bad bronchitis, a high temperature and even some bleeding.33
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On 25 August Anton finished the proofs of his collected Plays for Marx. He called his symptoms 'flu'. He was seen off from Moscow to Yalta by Olga Knipper, who was led away in tears and then comforted by Masha. Anton had gone to make the Yalta house habitable for his womenfolk.
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Uncle Vania Triumphant September-November 1899 ANTON SPENT THE NIGHT of 27 August 1899 at his new house. Only the servant's quarters and kitchen wing were ready: walled in by packing cases, attended by Mustafa, he camped with a paraffin stove and two candlesticks. He brewed tea with water from his own well. He dined at the girls' school. Mustafa lugged trunks and boxes from cellars all round Yalta. Anton checked linen, chose wallpaper, urged the builders to sand the floors and install the water closet. He planted out Olga's gift, a 'Queen of the Night' cactus, which he called the 'Green Reptile'. He joined a consumers' union for groceries and claimed a 20 per cent discount on baths for members of the writers' union. He ordered grass seed for Kuchuk-Koy and hundreds of flowerpots. All the Marx money was spent: no more was payable until December. Konshin had not paid up. Anton borrowed 5000 roubles from Efim Konovitser, his lawyer. Russian Thought advanced 3000. 'We Chekhovs,' Misha told Masha, 'are bad savers.'
Nadia, the loveliest Antonovka, did not visit. Nadia's father, the archpriest, had quarrelled with Varvara Kharkeevich, the headmistress who was providing Anton's dinners, and Anton, in sympathy, ostracized both father and daughter. Anton's social conscience cost him much. When he found a bed for a sick teacher, News of the Day printed 'Chekhov's Colony: in his new estate the writer is setting up a colony for village teachers of Serpukhov district, a cheap hotel for intellectual toilers.' Anton was flooded with appeals and, once the telephone was put in, he knew no peace. Although it linked him only to Yalta, telegrams often came just before dawn, when Moscow actors stopped celebrating. Anton ran, coughing, barefoot across unfinished floors, to answer the telephone.
On September 1899 Anton met the boat bringing Evgenia, Masha, Dr Kurkin and old Mariushka from Sevastopol, all prostrate with
SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER 1899
seasickness, Evgenia terrified of drowning. Mustafa climbed to the first-class deck to collect their luggage. A ship's officer, seeing a Tatar among the first-class passengers, struck him in the face. Mustafa bore the blow, then pointed to Anton, whose face was distorted with rage, and said: 'You haven't hit me, you've hit him.' The Crimean Courier reported the incident. Shortly afterwards Mustafa left Chekhov's service - either because of this outrage or because Evgenia did not want a Moslem in her house - and the Chekhovs hired Arseni Shcherbakov, who had worked in the Nikita Botanical Gardens and whose hobby was reading the Lives of the Saints. With Arseni, the house acquired its first pets, two tame cranes who danced after the gardener, and to whom old Mariushka became devoted.
The house was hardly fit to live in. Until October there were no internal doors: newspapers hung over the doorways. Visitors still gathered: the Chekhovs' old neighbour at Melikhovo, Prince Shakhovskoi, his marriage broken, clung to Anton, asking why families fell apart. Vania announced that he was coming for Christmas. Elena Shavrova, devastated by the death of her baby, sent her translation of Strind-berg's The Father and came to Yalta.34 In Moscow Ezhov insisted that Epifanov should die in Yalta, and that Chekhov should pay the sick man's fare.
Masha, on leave from teaching, toiled hard. She told Olga on 12 September: The house is charming, amazing views, but alas, far from finished. My room is not ready, nor is the lavatory, of course, there's dust, shavings, flies and a mass of workers banging away constantly. But the telephone works. Yalta ladies invite my brother to eat, but he is inexorable and prefers to dine at home. By evening people gather and carriages stand in a long line on our street, just like outside a theatre. We give visitors tea and jam, that's all. I'm quite good at being chambermaid. At 7 in the morning mother and I go to market for food. I don't get tired at all, the weather is enchanting, the air ravishing, my suitors delightful! Yesterday Prince Shakhovskoi sent me an enormous basket of fruit and roses. Shakhovskoi took back to Moscow a pair of cuff links depicting two birds, one melancholy, one coquettish, for Olga Knipper, and Anton's cassowary blanket, which had moulted: this he handed to Anton's in law Petrov at Muir and Mirrielees.
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I'll It IF I H I UM I' II S
In the country Stanislavsky devised the staging of Uncle Vania, while in Moscow Nemirovich-Danchenko struggled to interpret the text; privately, he expressed to friends the same reservations as the Imperial Theatre Committee. Nemirovich-Danchenko spent days drilling Olga Knipper, who dithered: was the Professor's wife Elena wanton or idle? As Nemirovich-Danchenko, fearless of Suvorin's critics, wanted to take Uncle Vania to Petersburg, too, into enemy territory, Anton withdrew the permission he had given for Uncle Vania to be staged by others there.
Just as Nemirovich-Danchenko wanted a monopoly of Anton's plays, so Olga was seeking a monopoly of Anton's love life. One by one, she got to know his women friends. She met Lika the day after parting with Anton. Kundasova could be ignored. On 21 September Olga Knipper told Anton: She [Kundasova] stood in the living room, saying she was paralysed, that she had forgotten where she was. Then she recovered; we chatted, had tea and lemon, and rye porridge. She was so elegant, sheer charm. But, you know, it was painful to look at her - she has been so knocked about by life she needs peace and affection so badly.35 On 29 September 1899 the Moscow Arts Theatre opened its new season with Uncle Vania, A. K. Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan the Terrible and Gerhart Hauptmann's Lonely People. Anton sent the company a telegram: 'we shall work mindfully, cheerfully, tirelessly, unanimously.' The theatre appointed him 'inspector of actresses'. Clouds were gathering, however, over Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavsky. Their patron Morozov was charged with fraud. Ivan the Terrible was coolly received. Olga wrote to Anton: 'Nobody is delighted by the Terrible's acting. You rightly distrusted Stanislavsky playing Ivan… What a night poor Stanislavsky is having today. The trouble is that audiences don't like him as an actor..,'36 Chekhov and Hauptmann, in his most Chekhovian play, Lonely People, were the last hope. Nemirovich-Danchenko and Olga both urged Anton to write them a third Ð1àÓAnton sent a jewel box instead. His mind plotted a garden, not a play, and his creativity was still dissipated revising early work for Adolf Marx. Never had he felt so detached from writing, or so absorbed in horticulture. He tore himself away from the garden only once in